The present invention relates to speech analysis, and more particularly to a computer-implemented natural language parser.
Understanding the meaning of a natural language sentence is the cornerstone of many fields of science with implications as broad ranging as from how humans interact with computers or machines to how they can interact with other intelligent agents, human or machine, through translation systems. The task becomes more complicated when the sentence is obtained using an automatic speech recognition system (ASR), where recognition errors such as insertions, omissions or substitutions can render the sentence less intelligible even to a human. Additional user-interface related factors might also introduce an element of un-naturalness to the speakers own utterance, so that the recognized sentence may contain the affects of user""s hesitations, pauses, repetitions, broken phrase or sentences.
Due to these factors, parsing natural language sentences occupies an important area in computer-implemented speech-related systems. However, current approaches for natural language parsers typically experience relatively sub-optimal robustness in handling the aforementioned errors of an automatic speech recognition system. The present invention overcomes the aforementioned disadvantages as well as other disadvantages.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a computer-implemented speech parsing method and apparatus for processing an input phrase is provided. The method and apparatus include providing a plurality of grammars that are indicative of predetermined topics. A plurality of parse forests are generated using the grammars, and tags are associated with words in the input phrase using the generated parse forests. The tags that are associated with the words are used as a parsed representation of the input phrase.
For a more complete understanding of the invention, its objects and advantages, reference should be made to the following specification and to the accompanying drawings.